Monthly Archives: October 2011

October 30, 2011- Al Jazeera English' Bob Abeshouse and Yasmeen Qureishi have put together an investigative report on the out-sized influence of the Koch Brothers on American democracy. The documentary premiered on AJE this week, and both starts and ends with the "Secret Koch Tapes" we exclusively published last month in a series of articles at Mother Jones and here at The BRAD BLOG.

There are a number of noteworthy points in this investigative look at the Kochs, co-owners of Koch Industries, the nation's second largest private corporation (the giant oil conglomerate inherited from their father), and how they are spending just some of the extraordinary $18 billion increase in personal wealth they've enjoyed over just the last three years under the tyranny of the Obama administration.

October 30, 2011- A prominent physicist and skeptic of global warming spent two years trying to find out if mainstream climate scientists were wrong. In the end, he determined they were right: Temperatures really are rising rapidly.

The study of the world's surface temperatures by Richard Muller was partially bankrolled by a foundation connected to global warming deniers. He pursued long-held skeptic theories in analyzing the data. He was spurred to action because of "Climategate," a British scandal involving hacked emails of scientists.

Yet he found that the land is 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) warmer than in the 1950s. Those numbers from Muller, who works at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, match those by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.

October 27, 2011- In an interesting loophole in Wisconsin’s campaign finance laws, the $10,000 limit on contributions by indiviulas is suspended once ”a recall primary or election is ordered, or after that time if incurred in contesting or defending the order.”

Which means that Scott Walkers’ patrons, the Koch brothers, can pour in as much money as they see fit. Considering Walker is one of their favorite petsoperativeswhores colleagues, pushing through highly unpopular laws designed to break unions at the behest of his handlers, it seems unlikely they would risk his ousting.